βιβλιο: "book"; σκώληξ: "worm"

“How are Things in Your Heart?”

The story if told that the once famous Professor Tholuck of Halle used to visit the rooms of his students and press them with the questions, “Brother, how are things in your heart?” How do thinks stand with you yourself?–not with your ears, not with your head, not with your forensic ability, not with your industriousness (although all that is also appropriate to being a theologian). In biblical terms the question is precisely, “How are things with your heart?” It is a question very properly addressed to every young and old theologian!

The question might also read: “Adam, where are you?” Are you perhaps–in your interior and exterior private life–fleeing from the One with whom you as a theologian are pre-eminently concerned? Have you hidden yourself from him in the shrubbery of your more or less profound or high-flown contemplation, explication, meditation, and application? Are you perhaps living in a private world which is like a snail’s shell?

There is no avoiding the fact that the living object of theology concerns the whole man. It concerns even what is most private in the private life of the theologian. Even in this sphere the theologian cannot and will not flee this object. If this situation should not suit him, he might, of course, prefer to choose another and less dangerous discipline than theology. But he should be aware that it is characteristic for the object of theology to seek out every man in every place sooner or later (see Psalm 139). It will seek him out wherever he may be and pose to him the same question. Therefore, it would probably be simpler to remain a theologian and learn to live with God’s claim upon even the most intimate realms of the theologian’s humanity.